The media spent a lot of time discussing Palin’s intelligence presumably because many voters cared about it.
Not because the voters cared about her intelligence per se, but because demonstrating that she’s a moron constitutes an argument the Republicans can’t easily defend against. It was pretty obvious that Palin isn’t exceptionally intelligent—far more obvious for a typical voter than any DNA test could be—and still the debates weren’t any less irrational than usually.
I would also expect soon emergence of social defense mechanisms against such tests. Saying that somebody is probably an idiot based on her genetic background is like saying somebody is probably a criminal based on his being black. You can expect counterarguments like
people are born equal and nobody is responsible for his genes
discrimination based on DNA test is unfair, because there will necessarily be some non-morons harmed by such a practice
well, even if it is 99% sure that she’s a moron, there still is a 1% chance that you can’t neglect, so the whole probability argument is worthless
People struggle to get Bayesian probabilistic arguments to work in courts where many bias avoiding mechanisms are already employed. In politics, even the most obvious everyday rational arguments don’t work regularly. To expect a fairly abstract argument based on numerical probabilities obtained by a method which almost nobody understands to be persuasive in a heated political debate is naïve.
Not because the voters cared about her intelligence per se, but because demonstrating that she’s a moron constitutes an argument the Republicans can’t easily defend against. It was pretty obvious that Palin isn’t exceptionally intelligent—far more obvious for a typical voter than any DNA test could be—and still the debates weren’t any less irrational than usually.
I would also expect soon emergence of social defense mechanisms against such tests. Saying that somebody is probably an idiot based on her genetic background is like saying somebody is probably a criminal based on his being black. You can expect counterarguments like
people are born equal and nobody is responsible for his genes
discrimination based on DNA test is unfair, because there will necessarily be some non-morons harmed by such a practice
well, even if it is 99% sure that she’s a moron, there still is a 1% chance that you can’t neglect, so the whole probability argument is worthless
People struggle to get Bayesian probabilistic arguments to work in courts where many bias avoiding mechanisms are already employed. In politics, even the most obvious everyday rational arguments don’t work regularly. To expect a fairly abstract argument based on numerical probabilities obtained by a method which almost nobody understands to be persuasive in a heated political debate is naïve.